Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Phil McColeman, in addition to doing virtually nothing over the past year, has now decided that he is an EXPERT in international and constitutional law. He gave a speech about the so-called "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act", a law that became subject to a constitutional challenge the day after it became law.

First, Phil says that Canada should strip anyone of citizenship if he or she engages in terrorism. Okay. Terrorists commit terrible acts, true. Terrorism should be condemned in all its forms, true. But at the same time, it is literally illegal under international human rights law to make a person without any citizenship. You simply cannot turn someone into a stateless refugee. But human rights, that's never bothered Phil or the Conservatives.

Second, Phil says that CSIS should be able to spy in foreign countries, and that the Canadian constitution is the only relevant law in such a situation. Mm-hm. So don't know if you've heard about this new idea that's been around since, oh, about 1648, and it's called "sovereignty". It's the idea that one country can't just go barging around in another country without the latter's permission. But it's all gravy, Phil says, because democracy-lovin' Canada doesn't like the governments in the countries whose sovereignty we'd be violating. So if the government of a democractic country like Benin decided to send its secret police into Canada to start snooping around, without telling the Canadian government, Phil would be totally fine with that. Or if a country like, say, Russia decided to start rustling up trouble in a country like, say, Ukraine, Phil would be totally fine with that too.

P.S. Thanks Phil for reminding us that terrorism is bad. You want a cookie? Great. Now please stop blowing smoke and start addressing substantive issues like Ontario's sagging economy or environmental damage and global warming.

"SO31s" refers to Standing Order 31. In Parliament, sometimes an MP wants to mention a prominent member of their community, or a local sports team that has made the MP's riding proud. The S.O.31 allows the MP to make a short speech about these topics in Parliament.

Phil McColeman, however, has chosen to use his S.O.31 for the same tired rhetoric churned out by his party on a daily basis. Phil, this is why people are tired of politics. Even David Akin found it ridiculous, as evidenced by his clearly sarcastic tweet.

So this is what Phil spends his time doing while the taxpayer pays him six figures a year. This is pretty embarassing for anybody who lives in Brant. We here at this non-partisan blog are simply disgusted.

Phil may eventually decide to grow up and stop this nonsense. But not likely because he's been doing this type of thing for years. More likely, it is time for Brant to Dump Phil!!

The bill is the so-called "Fair Elections Act". The opposition parties in Parliament have dubbed it the "Unfair Elections Act", and for good reason. The bill does a lot of really bad things for Canadian democracy, such as getting rid of vouching at polling stations. This doesn't sound that bad, but think about this: how many students who live in Brant to attend university or college, but aren't registered with Elections Canada to vote in Brant? A lot of these students don't have ID that proves their current address. So in the next election, they won't be able to vote.

Let's think about that for a second. Why would Conservatives like Phil want to make it harder for students to vote (in addition to poor people and marginalized groups)? Maybe it's because these people don't normally vote Conservative. This might sound like a conspiracy theory, but consider the following quote from Andrew Coyne, a proudly conservative journalist:

In normal times, under a normal government, the Fair Elections Act
would have been withdrawn by now, or at least be in serious trouble. The
past few weeks have seen the bill denounced as a threat to democracy by
the chief electoral officer, the former chief electoral officer,
several provincial elections officials, academic experts domestic and
foreign, and newspaper editorials across the country. Thursday they were joined by Harry Neufeld, the former chief
electoral officer of British Columbia and the author of an inquiry into
irregularities in the 2011 election.

What is Phil's response to the "Fair Elections Act"? My guess is he's still sitting on the backbench clapping away every time the Conservative members resort to cover-ups, misrepresentations and outright lies when defending the Unfair Elections Act.

Phil is a weak MP who does not care about the institution of democracy. In 2015, let's show that we care about democracy by voting to Dump Phil!